"Where's Cherry Street?" I asked. "The place that fireman mentioned."
"Jeez, don't you know Cherry Street? Tought you said you wuz from New York."
Al and Mush turned and looked at me.
"Yeh, I lived there for the past five or six years, but I don't know Cherry Street."
"You don't know Cherry Street! Well, where do you hang out?"
Scotty had whipped his harmonica out of his back pocket and with a grandiose gesture brought it up and around to his mouth and began playing something gay and Scotch. Everything Scotty played sounded Scottish, no matter what the song was. So I didn't have to account for my hangouts in New York.
One of those evenings, the third or fourth night out, Chips came up on the poop, in one hand balancing one of the long benches from the fo'castle and in the other carrying a large handsome leather case. He put the bench down, sat on it, then gently placed the large leather case in front of him. He snapped the lock and lifted out a squarish object carefully wrapped in green flannel. Tenderly, he removed the green flannel and revealed the largest, most gorgeous accordion I ever saw. It was filigreed in silver with pearl inlays, with assorted doodads and buttons and stops along one side—the other side held a regular piano keyboard.
When the last fold of the green flannel had fallen away. Chips held the instrument up in front of him, resting it on his knee. The rays of the setting sun caught the glitter of it and flecked the whirligigs on its silver trappings. It was beautiful.
"Gosh," burst from Mush, who went Hoosier under stress. "Chips, where'd you get that?"
"Dot's mine," said Chips, in his deep voice—deep and reverent.
"Gosh. That's beautiful."
"Costs four hundred dolla'," Chips added solemnly.
The rest of the crew mumbled their admiration. Four hundred dollars seemed not a cent too much for anything so handsome. It was a bargain at that—though no one seemed to wonder, as I did, how he'd paid for it out of the sixty-five dollars a month he earned.
"Kin ya play it, Chips?"
"Sure."
Chips had been waiting for someone to ask that. He carefully adjusted a strap around his shoulders to hold the accordion to his chest. If he'd been a smaller man, he would have had to stand up to play. And as he swung the strap over his head, I noticed he wasn't wearing his perennial hard straw hat. His hair was carefully parted and plastered down—this was an occasion, and he'd come prepared for it!
He carefully fingered the keyboard, tried a few stops and doodads on the other side, then unlatched a couple of silver hooks that held the thing together. Finally, having thrust his big foot forward, given one tap, nodded his head, and unfolded the big bellows, big organ sounds with just a sprinkle of squeaks filled the poopdeck.
The pleats of the bellows were a fine salmon pink, and, watching big Chips and his beautiful accordion for the moment, I hadn't been listening.
He seemed to play competently, and after a while there was a pattern to the music. The guys began to nod their heads at each other—a couple of old fellows from the black gang thought they recognized the tune. But they didn't; nobody did except Chips. It was one of those long continuous marches written for the accordion—one of those things that always seem about to end, and as you get ready to applaud, it starts all over again with very little variation from the motif that proceeded.
Chips played it well. If he stumbled he looked down on his keyboard and stopped, corrected the placing of his fingers, and started that bit of stuff again. Then when it got going right, he'd look up again, head erect, eyes straight ahead above the folding and unfolding of the handsome pink bellows, and roll right along, just tapping his big foot now and again. I figured that's when he turned a sheet of music in his memory.
It was a long piece, and when it was done everybody approved and told Chips he was great. But he said nothing—just silently pokes a stop here and there and fingered his keyboard.
"Say, that was swell, Chips, what was it?"
"March."
"Ain't that great. Boy, this is gonna be some trip," enthused Mush, "music an' . . ."
"Hey," one of the old black gang called out, "kin ya play Rosy O'Grady?
"Naw."
Joe and Slim, the Georgia Boy, had come off watch. They, too, were delighted with Chip's big accordion.
"Man, look at that," said Slim. "Kin he play it?"
"Sure he kin play. Go on. Chips, play some more."
Chips adjusted his fingers, tapped his foot, head up, eyes front, and played it again—again the same march, with the same stumbles. And we all were as enthusiastic. Joe laughed and tried a few hula steps, the Georgia Boy swung into a couple of his lazy shuffles, and that reminded Scotty—who'd been sitting on his heels in front of Chips—that he, too, had talent. He jumped up and whirled into a fling. None of them kept it up very long—their dancing didn't go with that music. Soon they all sat down. This time it seemed the march was longer. I think Chips threw in a few extra choruses, but there was no way of telling.
He finished and carefully hooked his beautiful accordion together, unstrapped it from his shoulders, wrapped it up in the green flannel, packed it into the big leather case, and stood up. It was getting dark and maybe he didn't want to get it damp. As he started down for the fo'castle, case in hand, I asked him, "Chips, where'd you learn to play?"
He said, "I take lesson."
I don't know if that was singular or plural, but that's the only piece I ever heard him play on his four-hundred-dollar accordion all the way down to the Argentine and all the way back.
8. Portraits on the Hatch
FROM THE DAY BIG JOE CAME ABOARD THAT SHIP, he and I got along pretty good. I'm not sure about the big heel's intentions at the beginning, because he told me a number of weeks after we'd been hanging out together:
"Ya know wan I come aboard and I see you leetle fat guy give a big hallo—I sez to m'self, dere's nice punk."
"Why, you big Canuck, what d'hell d'you mean calling me a punk?"
"I'm not callin'. All ship she got punks, so I tought you're punk. Dat's all. Don' be mad."
Now there's not much sense in attempting to write Joe's dialect, and I ought to quit trying. He was a phenomenal guy. According to his story, he was born of a French Tahitian mother and his father was a Yorkshireman, the Captain of a four-masted schooner that sailed into Papeete, Tahiti, one day. He settled there, married Joe's mother, raised a family, and plied the trade around the Marquesas Islands.
The language Joe spoke was not English. He twisted its meaning and pronunciation to suit himself. Perry the Portuguese was quite a linguist— he spoke English with little accent, later led us around the Argentine with his fluent Spanish, and I've heard him ripple away in French at a couple of girls from Marseilles down in Bahia Blanca. Perry said the big fellow spoke French as he did English. And the Captain's messboy Philip, who was a bright boy, too, said he couldn't speak the Island language any better.
Joe did some drawing, very naive stuff. When he found out I drew, too, he hung around. He was a good guy to be with. He sang well, danced, and told the most fantastic stories I ever heard. They mightn't seem so good as I write them, but I haven't the advantage of Joe's gurgling voice nor his amazing and curious phraseology.